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Monday, September 12, 2011

Now what?

True Blood has ended for the season, what else is on? I've tuned in to the BBC version of "Being Human", although I'm a whole season behind on that show so I guess I do that have. But there really aren't shows of that caliber and genre worth watching.

Before, I always had to get my fix from movies. I was a huge horror movie and sci-fi fantasy junkie. I think the horror genre has gone downhill but I have hopes for the sci-fi fantasy. Here are a few random movies in my DVD collection:

NIGHTBREED - Totally cheesy but in a good way. The concept is really interesting where a group of subhumans that are "Nightbreed" dwell underground and hidden from humans. They are dangerous, but they are their own culture and race that have fought against human fear their whole life that they went into hiding. Craig Sheffer is turned, and through a series of events they are discovered and singled out for extermination.

SINBAD AND THE EYE OF THE TIGER - Say what you will, but I love this movie. Partly due to the genius of Ray Harryhausen. Everything has gone CGI but I truly appreciate the hard work that went behind Dynamation (Also liked Mystery Island). Here you have a prince turned into a baboon, a giant walrus battle, sabre tooth tiger, the evil witch and her creepy companion, Trogladyte (love Trog!) and plenty of adventures.

DRAGONSLAYER - Yep, for me this was the best dragon movie ever made. Truly scary depiction of what life could have been like if they had existed. Villagers have a lottery where names are drawn every so many years for the young virgins to offer as a sacrifice to keep the dragon from destroying the village. A young apprentice in the village seeks out a powerful sorcerer to help them slay the dragon. Great effects, and probably for today's age a slower pace than the movies we're used to but still entertaining.

Of course I also want to point out "Village of the damned" (1995) Remake with Christopher Reeve. I normally don't warm up to remakes because I own the originals. But there were good moments and perfomances in this that make it worthy of a watch. When a town blacks out, they awaken to find that some of the women of child bearing age are pregnant. When the children are born, they all look alike, are highly intelligent and scary as hell.

I once suggested a movie to a friend and she said, "But it's in black and white!". I still don't know what that means. You may have a better chance at good script and suspense in older films because they did not have CGI to heavily lean on so they had to brush up those aspects of their movie--as where in today's films we go to an expensive film and feel cheated. Sure the FX are great but everything else is blah. I was lucky that growing up overseas we had exposure to a lot of old movies, b-movies and very rarely the current stuff since it took a while for movies to hit theaters where we were and we did not go often. Now, I am a fan of all kinds of genres from b-movies (Yes, the Mighty peking man is a hysterical laugh if you have the tolerance) to foriegn films.

Thus ends a fairly long post, but I have always been enthusiastic about films my entire life. :)